Consumption Diary: November 2024

MUSIC

BOOKS

Pet by Catherine Chidgey (novel, audiobook, NZ, 2023) - Eighties nostalgia + creepy teacher + dead mother = a winning combo.

The Bone People by Keri Hulme (novel, audiobook, NZ, 1984) - Audiobook made it both easier (faster) and harder (more superficial) to get into this classic. Ruby Solly's narration was great.

The Yield by Tara June Winch (novel, audiobook, Australia, 2019) - Really great. At certain points it felt like it was becoming a large social novel (think Jonathan Franzen without the forced jokes), only to move on to other modes, other things.

A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict by Ilan Pappe (non-fiction, audiobook, Israel, 2024) - Don't worry, this Israeli historian really doesn't like Settler Colonial Israel either (but it fairly clear headed and concise about it all).

The Lazy Boys by Carl Shuker (novel, physical book, NZ, 2006) - Thought I should finally read this book about a particular kind of student experience at Otago University in the 1990s, which is and isn't that different to today. Unpleasant to sit with Richey for so long (which is the point). Weird to know exactly which flats and dairies are being mentioned. 

Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase (novel, audiobook, Botswana, 2024) - Took forever to get to the crime fiction plot that was prominent on the cover blurb, which unfortunately made all the world-building feel like throat-clearing.

Aisle Nine by Ian X Cho (novel, audiobook, Australia, 2024) - YA set in the US after portals to a nightmare world start to open up. A bit paint by numbers.

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (novel, audiobook, Ireland, 2024) - Hard not to read Rooney's latest in light of her previous work. This is and feels longer, but not necessarily bigger. It's less thrilling (feels like the author has more sympathy for her characters, which means there's less cravenness), more measured... kinda like a game of chess. 

Ghost Bus by Anna Kirtlan (short stories, audiobook, NZ, 2020) - Far be it from me to critique an author-with-a-day-job's creative work on the basis of their day job, but you know how sometimes fiction feels false, like it was written by a journalist or a comms professional...? Like, how sometimes the title is enough for you to know exactly what you'll get? Stories aren't peanut butter - at least, I'd prefer them not to be shelf stable commodities.

Plus I read / assessed an MA in Creative Writing thesis, which I won't include in my reading stats for the year.

Statistical interlude

With one month to go (86 books & counting), here's how I'm tracking against the semi-random reading targets I set for 2024:

• At least ten single-author poetry collections: 7/10... Should be easy enough to slip 3 more into December's reading IF I remember
• At least one book from every continent: 6/6 (achieved by July)
• At least four books in translation: 6/4
• At least four books by Australians: 6/4 
• At least five different genres of novel: ∞/5  (this was a stupidly vague target)

FILM & TV

Slow Horses Seasons 3 & 4

Rebel Ridge

Killers of the Flower Moon

Woman of the Hour

This Fluid Thrill Book Awards 2022: Best Books

This list is all about the best books I read in 2022, not necessarily those that came out this year.

I do this most years, see: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, (...), 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, & 2010.

And, like most years, I'm going to delve into some stats first.

I read 66 books in 2022, down from 90 in 2021, but the same total as what I read in 2020. A reversion to the mean? Probably. Sure, the additional reading I did for my doctorate and judging another writing competition likely took a dent out of my reading/listening to audiobooks for pleasure time, but there's always something. If I can hit 70 books in 2023 I'll be satisfied.

On that read/listen point, the trend continues: 3 physical books (all NZ authors) and 63 audiobooks (incl. 7 NZ... which is probably a record... hold that thought). Eye-issues plus busy life plus the fact almost 20 years of listening to audiobooks has sufficiently wired my brain to "read" for enjoyment and/or read critically through my ears.

My publisher is bringing out an anthology next year featuring one of my stories and I asked if there'd be an audiobook version (buoyed by the appearance of the likes of Noelle McCarthy's memoir and Coco Solid's novel in audiobook format in 2022). The response was... not encouraging. I wonder if it's because their business model does not adequately capture value from listeners who use library services like Libby? I know the Public Lending Right in NZ has some catching up to do in this respect also. 

My reliance on audiobooks influences my reading across every dimension:

• Where I'm reading:

So many Americans! Some years the US and UK are neck and neck. Kinda stoked to see NZ beat the UK for once.

• What I'm reading:

No poetry collections! For the first in a long time. I borrowed some as e-books, but never got around to reading them (there was always an audiobook that was due back in a couple of days). For shame! I might need to do something silly like set aside a month to just read poetry... Poetray? Poetruly? Sepoetry?

• When I'm reading:

The limited (but expanding) pool for audiobooks means I'm always lurking in the deep end for new additions, which tend to be recent releases. The long tail indicates I do go into the back catalogue for authors/books that take my fancy if I can find them, but I wouldn't say I put a lot of effort into reading outside of my era in 2022.

• Who I'm reading:

These are rough measures of diversity. I haven't researched the family tree of every author or the intricacies of their gender identities, but it gives a fair representation of the audiobook marketplace (if you factor in that I'm conscious of the biases in said marketplace and try to read diversely... which is even more depressing).

Interestingly, the splits for both the above graphs were the same in 2021. Spooky. 

The percentage of books in translation dropped from 8% in 2022 to 6% in 2022. Rounding error.

Okay, so that was my reading landscape... Now for:

My favourite books of 2022 (in a semi-thematic order rather than a merit ranking)

Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

A big, raucous, uneven slab of speculative fiction. Powerful people with vested interests in low-lying locales not being swallowed by the sea (see: real estate values) get embroiled in a plot to re-engineer the climate. Not usually the sort of people I'd want to spend 15 hours / 720 pages with, but Stephenson has a way of telling stories populated by adequate vessels for the plot, and plots that don't deal in moral absolutes or media black and whites.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

As with Termination Shock, the geek quotient is high here, as you'd expect from the author of The Martian. Project Hail Mary starts with the less-than-promising trope of the amnesic astronaut, and there's a fair amount of hard sci 'watch me do calculations', but this one goes somewhere new and unexpected (for this occasional tourist in outer space, at least). 

Liberation Day by George Saunders

Has it really been 9 years since Tenth of December? In that time, Saunders won the Booker with an over-hyped, under-whelming novel and wrote an amazeballs non-fiction book about Russian masters of the short story. 

I approached Liberation Day with trepidation. It sounded like a George Saunders title, but also a Fox News chryon. The title story opens the collection and is an amalgam of 'Escape from Spiderhead', 'Pastoralia' and 'The Semplica Girl Diaries'... and it's not the only story you can reformulate using 2 or 3 stories from Saunders preceding collections...

BUT each of them works. More than works: each is better than the best of its antecedents.

Maybe I'm still under the spell of A Swim in a Pond in the Rain... 'Liberation Day' seems to be directly in conversation with what Saunders-speaking-as-Saunders has said about fiction. The story is about the act of writing, yet avoids all the pitfalls that come with being meta. How? How!?

I was prepared not to love this collection. But it left me undone in the best way.

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout

In what is becoming an almost annual occurrence, Strout strides into the top ten with another book that's probably better than the last. Oh William! is the third in the Lucy Barton series, and has already been followed up with a fourth (Lucy by the Sea... which bookmakers have given short odds to appear in the 2023 This Fluid Thrill book awards!).

It's interesting to compare Strout and Saunders, two writers at the height of their powers. My fear with Saunders is always that the fireworks will explode while still in his hands. With Strout, it's that she decides to leave the matches at home and enjoy the dusk in peace. But she's too canny for that. One mustn't mistake New England restraint for a lack of narrative drive. 

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy

I was prepared to actively dislike this memoir. The title was a little reminiscent of the novel How to Kill Your Family, which stands out as one of my reading lowlights in recent years. I didn't really know who McCurdy was, and don't think I'd ever stumbled across an episode of iCarly, the Nickelodeon kids show that made her famous as a teen. But I didn't need to.

The magic here is in the voice of McCurdy, which manages to be both frank and entertaining (see the tightrope-walk title). There's enough raw material for a full-on misery memoir here, but McCurdy doesn't belabour individual instances of her mother's narcissism and child-abuse-in-hindsight. She incriminates herself in every step down the staircase of an eating disorder, and even when absolving her childhood self of these actions, it's still not black and white.

Grand by Noelle McCarthy

Another memoir that revolves around a media personality and her less-than-stellar mother. This time, it's Irish ex-pat / NZ radio personality McCarthy and her alcoholic mother. While this relationship centres much of the telling, this book is about so much more: childhood in Ireland, emigrating to NZ, the author's own boozy past and near-misses, and becoming a mother herself. 

Grand feels finely crafted, as if each chapter is expertly placed and counterbalanced, each chapter in turn comprises of its own set of smaller, complimentary pieces, like the felt-lined compartments of an apothecary's cabinet. 

I'm excited to read what Noelle McCarthy publishes next.

Loop Tracks by Sue Orr

When the audiobook of this dropped in 2022 I leaped at the chance to re-enter this world. So much of the coverage when Loop Tracks was released in New Zealand in 2021 focussed on the extended opening scene where a pregnant teen is due to fly to Sydney for an abortion (illegal in NZ at the time). 

But this is also a lockdown novel, a neurodiversity novel, even a hooking-up-with-the-guy-next-door novel. It's the kind of book that reflects different lights from different angles.

Fantastic stuff!

Halibut on the Moon by David Vann

Another NZ-ish novel I read behind the times due to my audiobook crutch. This is quite literally the third or fourth time Vann has written this book, but hells bells, this is up there with Legend of a Suicide. 

(It's probably better, but I'm a sucker for the narrative tricks Vann pulled that first time out and was far more impressionable when I read it.)

The Adversary by Emmanuel Carrere

This is Carrere's non-fiction account of a man who killed his family, but that's just the start of it (the subtitle is: a true story of monstrous deception). Carrere is very much part of the telling, including why the case first interested him, his thwarted attempts to make contact with the accused, his decision to write a novel about it instead, then finally striking up a dialogue with the murderer. 

For this kind of writer-in-the-midst tale to work, the author's own circumstances and insights must be as intriguing and rewarding as the retelling of the 'monstrous deception'. Carrere does seems to come from a similar Francophone misandrist mold as Michel Houellebecq, but is somehow less creepy and thus eminently more successful.

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

This was another case of my preconceptions being confounded (I guess my natural disposition is: hater). Turns out I'm a snob about YA authors and YouTubers, despite enjoying many YA novels and many, many hours of YouTube content. But even the smartest, most engaging thinkers can struggle with wide-ranging topics and the 'I'm just picking what interests me' approach (see Chuck Klosterman's The Nineties). 

But Green manages to pull it off. From plagues to the QWERTY keyboard to Diet Dr Pepper, this book is both good company and enlightening.

Consumption Diary: May, June and July 2022

MUSIC: MAY

CAPTAIN'S LOG

So last time I was not-so-quietly pleased with myself for having knocked out a first draft of a short novel. I haven't done much with it since then, because life. As in:

• post-COVID frailty and winter cold and flu season meant my kids missed 3 weeks of school each last term
• I started my doctorate (DBA), which involves 6 papers in the first 12 months and then 2 years full-time on the thesis after that, which means lectures and assignments for the first time in *checks notes* 18 years!?
• I needed to let the novel sit anyway. I still haven't quite figured out how to re-up the ending to make the payoff match the set-up AND the twist. 
• While letting it sit/stew, I did some research for some of the characters, like reading Jordan B Peterson and watching all of Lost.

Some of the above reasons/excuses/humblebrags (Lost is loooong, dude) help explain why I haven't done one of these consumption diaries for 3+ months, too. So I haven't gone to any lengths to write about the books individually. And the film & TV list is incomplete as I don't take notes as I watch things and, unlike Libby, Audible or physical book shelves, streaming apps such at helping you remember what you watched and when... by design?

Anyway, now that I'm studying again, I'm reading a lot of journal articles and using Endnote...  but don't expect any of that consumption to make it into these entries, though some of my fave books from last year (Braiding Sweetgrass and Sand Talk) are definitely part of my research area.

BOOKS

The Adversary by Emmanuel Carrere (non-fiction, audiobook)

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout (novel, audiobook)

Vladmir by Julia May Jonas (novel, audiobook)

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (novella, audiobook)

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder (novel, audiobook)

Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (novel, audiobook)

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen (novel, audiobook)

The Snow Leopard Project and other adventures in warzone conservation by Alex Dehgan (non-fiction, audiobook)

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney (novel, audiobook)

The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun (novel, audiobook)

Something New Under the Sun by Alexandra Kleeman (novel, audiobook)

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki (novel, audiobook)

Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor (novel, audiobook)

12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson (non-fiction, audiobook)... research for a teenage character, I swear!

Rat King Landlord by Murdoch Stephens (novel, physical book, NZ)

Down from Upland by Murdoch Stephens (novel, physical book, NZ)

MUSIC: JUNE

FILM & TV

Lost, Seasons 1-6

Parks & Rec - Seasons 3-7*

Hacks, Season 1

Better Call Saul, Season 6

Barry, Season 3

The Pentaverate, Season 1

The Peanut Butter Falcon

Midsommar

Hustle

The Reader

Those Who Wish Me Dead

Spiderhead

Space Jam: A New Legacy

Zombieland: Double Tap

Old

The Gray Man

MUSIC: JULY

March & April Consumption Diary (with writing update)

MUSIC - MARCH

WRITING

On the 4th of March I started work to expand my short story, 'Ambient Ecstasy', which I wrote late last year and was published in The Listener as part of their summer reading series, into a short novel. By short, I was picturing 40,000 words. The short story was about 1,200 words.

On 25 April, I finished the first draft, which clocked in at 32,180 words.

Disclaimer 1: I was on day three of testing positive for COVID, so the final days of drafting were a little cloudy.

Disclaimer 2: I knew at the time that there were some additional scenes/chapters I'd need to write as part of the 2nd draft, but I'd made it to the end and would need to go back to the start to figure out where these additional bits went. The second half has a different narrative form to the first, with multiple narrators, so there'll be quite a bit of moving chunks around between now and settling on the final form.

Right now, I'm mid-way through a full read-through. This involves noting down things to add in, or sections that need to be sped up, or spruced up, or made consistent with later chapters, and also making some quick tweaks as I go.

The aim is to be done with the 2nd draft by mid-May... and we'll see what's left to do when I get to that point.

16 days into the first draft I released what needed to happen in the second half, and stopped to write a short essay about the realisation and how I'd reconceptualised the book. I'll have to return to that, too, when the book is a little closer to its final form.

It feels good to be writing again, even if it is in 500-700 word chunks every morning before the kids wake up and my days get hectic. And writing through COVID (my daughter caught it first, then my wife, then my son, and I was almost done with my 7 day isolation as a household contact before I tested positive). Day two was the worst: body aches and it felt like I was going to run a big fever, but then day three I felt almost normal, only to get a massive head cold that lasted the next three days. I just have a dry cough now. My brain is slightly muddled, but I figure that's 2 weeks of house arrest with other sickies, while working in between the stat days.

BOOKS

Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson (novel, audiobook, 2021)

Classic Stephenson.

A big, glorious, only-slightly-ludicrous (giant hogs vs meth gators!) examination of what might happen when certain low-lying territories take climate action into their own hands. Goes deep into the science and doesn't do the same for the morality, though this isn't completely shirked. 

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (novel, audiobook, 2021)

Another long, hard-leaning sci-fi that I just lapped up. Similar to The Martian, but also different enough. Which do I prefer? Maybe this one?

Loop Tracks by Sue Orr (novel, phys/audiobook, 2021)

I started reading this as a physical book but anyone whose read one of these consumption diaries knows I struggle with physical books these days. The act of reading sends me to sleep, regardless of the content.

So I restarted this as an audiobook when it appeared on Audible and man, it was so great. 

Lot's of the coverage focussed on the early section of the novel when abortions were illegal in NZ but not Australia, but the later sections, set amid the first nationwide COVID lockdown in 2020, were a triumph in their own right. I think in twenty years, it'll be interesting to see which parts people focus on.

As an aside, man I wish more NZ books were available as audiobooks!

Halibut on the Moon by David Vann (novel, audiobook, 2017)

Oh, what's this? Another NZ book? Well, it qualified for the Ockhams in 2020 and made the fiction short-list, by virtue of a) Vann being an NZ resident and b) the book being crazy good. It didn't win (Aue by Becky Manawatu did), and probably wasn't a great look for our biggest book prize to go to something set in the US by a US national... But as I say, it's very, very good.

David Vann has written this book a few times. From the amazing story collection Legend of a Suicide to Caribou Island and I think a few others (honestly, I got a bit tired of it all for a while there)... but Halibut manages to traverse the same ground (retelling the author's father's suicide, this time sticking only to the father's perspective) in such a sharp, manic way. He feels like Thomas McGuane or Barry Hannah protagonist. And knowing how this story has ended before, and the rug that was pulled in Legend, there's an incredible extra-textual tension.

I still probably rate Legend higher, for the way it plays with the story collection form, but if you prefer novels, you might want to start here.

Clothes clothes clothes music music music boys boys boys by Viv Albertine (memoir, audiobook, 2014)

Really enjoyed this. I remembered The Slits cover of 'Heard it Through the Grapevine' but that's about all I knew of Albertine's career in punk. It was facinating how connected she was with acts like The Clash and the Sex Pistols, and what happened after the Slits broke up, and her return to music after the housewife interregnum.

Great stuff.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (novel, audiobook, 2015)

I wanted to like this more than I did. Maybe I just don't have much love left for the kind of epic, smartypants American novels (think Donna Tartt and Jonathan Franzen)? So much of it just felt false. Sometimes I like false. Even inside the book, the falsest part (Lancelot becoming a famous playwright) was the most interesting. But as a whole... 

Your Ad Could Go Here by Oksana Zabuzhko (short stories, audiobook, translated, 2018)

Yes, I thought I should read a Ukrainian book and landed on this after some research. And maybe it's impossible to be that book people go to for the wrong reasons. Like, say NZ was invaded by Chile (sorry, Chilenos, just an example!), which book should people read? That's the kind of question that can power a decent podcast, but it's not something that actually has an answer. The answer to which book is always the next and then another and then another.

Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen (short stories, audiobook, 2021)

Didn't pick this to read a Chinese novel (someone recommended it to me), and I kind of forgot it was short stories at first. The first story feels like the start of a novel, but not a particularly good one. And then it ends in a non-good way. The next couple of stories are much stronger, but whenever the stories get too journalistic, I lost interest.

The Fell by Sarah Moss (novel, audiobook, 2021)

Really interesting to compare this lockdown-UK-style novel to Loop Tracks. This is the third of Moss's novels I've read after Ghost Wall (2018) and Summerwater (2020), in part because they are short and audiobooks are readily available. I'm in love with the idea of short novels (see "Writing" above) but none of these quite hit the mark for me. The further removed from Ghost Wall, the more I think it'll end up being my favourite of hers.

Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler (novel, audiobook, 2021)

Meandering and dull. Felt like the first draft. The get it all out, all the stuff that actually happened and the big thing I invented to make it fiction, so I can then unearth what the true point of it is.  

How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie (novel, audiobook, 2021)

Really disliked this book. And it's not the sort of thing you want to Google. Just keep moving.

MOVIES & TV

Our Flag Means Death - Season 1

Biography: WWE Legends - Season 1

Winning Time - Season 1 (ongoing)

Abbott Elementary - Season 1

Moon Knight - first 3 eps of Season 1 before abandoning

The Bubble

Nightmare Alley

Heat

Motherless Brooklyn

Soylent Green

Parks & Rec - started re-watching from Season 2 (ongoing)

Lost - first 2 eps of Season 1 (thinking of rewatching - never watched all the eps first time around...losts of hints of Damon Lindelof's later shows, but also lots of network elements... and 25 eps a season... Season 1 is almost as long as the full run of The Leftovers!)

MUSIC - APRIL

January & February 2022 Consumption Diary

MUSIC - JAN

BOOKS

14 books in 9 weeks. Not on pace for 100. Cae Sera.

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz (novel, US, audiobook, 2021)

Absolutely hooked by the first half (struggling mid-list author and creative writing teacher takes plot from deceased student, becomes best-seller, receives anonymous messages threatening to out him). Let down by the second (obvious twist thanks to there being no other candidates).

The Proof is in the Plants by Simon Hill (non-fiction, Australia, audiobook, 2021)

This was the book that helped rationalise what I wanted to do with my diet anyway. We've been getting Green Diner Table (vegan food boxes) for the last month, and at least one of the kids is up for it. Still very much in the flexitarian category: if it has been cooked and would go to waste, the sins of refusal outweigh the sins of moderate consumption... for now.

A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib (non-fiction, US, audiobook, 2021)

Good, if uneven, essay collection on black creativity which is perhaps better remembered as a topic-driven memoir.

When I was a Child I Read Books (non-fiction, US, audiobook, 2012)

A topic-driven memoir that just never grabbed me. Perhaps its the Christian underpinning? I kinda let it gloss over me, TBH.

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green (non-fiction, US, audiobook, 2021)

I didn't have high hopes from this survey of recent human endeavour from the author of popular YA novels that spawn somewhat popular movies... But I really enjoyed it. There's something stupidly delicious about giving things like plagues (book was written amidst the first wave of COVID) and the QWERTY keyboard a score out of five like a YELP review. Despite the title, it doesn't set out to do more than it actually achieve. Two ticks.

Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age - and Why We Don't Have To by David A. Sinclair (non-fiction, Australia, audiobook, 2019)

I'm still not sure I will, or want to, live to 120, but I'm a little more optimistic for my kids. Published before COVID swept the globe, it's got some portentious comments on the risk of viruses undoing much of the gains in human lifespan discussed in the book.

The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman (non-fiction, US, audiobook, 2022)

Unlike Green's book, Klosterman's is supposed to be more timebound, but it feels rougher and more superficial. The bad kind of book-written-in-lockdown. Lots on presidential elections. Very little personality, which is weird for Klosterman. Disappointing.

The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood (novel, Australia, audiobook, 2015)

It was odd reading this after Wood's book on craft (The Luminous Solution). It destablised my foundations. But will I think much about this book (plot or craft) much in 12 months?

The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World by Lewis Hyde (non-fiction, US, audiobook, 1983)

A long, fulsome examination of gift economies and how this might apply to the act of writing (particularly poetry), with two extensive case studies/counter examples of Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound.

The last chapter left me dumbfounded. The way it summarised my nascent feelings about writing, particuarly the question "Why write (with no guarantee of readership or financial reward)?" I suspect I will return to that chapter multiple times over the coming years.

Binge by Douglas Coupland (short stories, Canada, audiobook, 2021)

60 very short stories, read by a range of narrators in the audiobook version, from the aging don of finger-on-the-pulse-itude. Coupland still has no qualms about hopping into different identities (though he is perhaps more constrained when it comes to race), and a less generous reader could probably find fault in most of these tableau, but it's Coupland. There's enough connection between the stories that it could have been sold as a novel-in-stories (heaven forbid), but it's just a rollicking good time amid the opioid crisis, a global pandemic and the kind of information overload he's been preaching since I was in primary school but finally WE ALL GET IT.

True Crime Story by Joseph Knox (novel, UK, audiobook, 2021)

Risked being too fancy by half. But succeeded with this reader. Looking at some of the reviews and engagement with Knox on social media, not everyone got it (it's a novel presented as non-fiction, based mostly on the work of Knox's female writer friend with some of his own additions after her death).

The Writer's Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse Five by Tom Roston (non-fiction, US, audiobook, 2021)

Opens with the claim that Vonnegut and a fellow POW may have hunted down and killed one of their guards from the camp in Dresden. Even as Roston relays this theory, he distances himself from it, saying ultimately he doesn't believe it happened. But without it, the book is a little flat. And with it, the book is lacking integrity.

Treacle Walker by Alan Garner (novella, UK, audiobook, 2021)

So this is who Max Porter's ripping off :) 

The Regional Office is Under Attack! by Manuel Gonzales (novel, US, audiobook, 2021) 

Loved the first few chapters. It felt like the very close third person of a George Saunders short story. But that self-correcting, multi-clausal, sweary mode can really start to drag after a while. And the back and forth structure (and yes, the more fantastical elements, which are never really my bag) didn't help keep me hooked.

FILM & TV

Station Eleven: Season 1 - Makes me wanna re-watch The Leftovers.

Yellowjackets: Season 1 - yessir, we 90's kids are officially the target market for nostalgia

Starstruck: Season 2

After Life: Season 3

Boyhood

Motherless Brooklyn

Home Team

The French Dispatch

Chaos Walking

Heathers

The Masked Singer (US): Season 5  + I Can See Your Voice: Season 1 - the kids enjoy these...

MUSIC - FEB

June Consumption Diary

MUSIC

BOOKS

So midway through the year and I've read 53 books... On track for 100 in a year for the first time since I started counting. Probably ever. Not all of them have been stellar. Some have been mercifully short. Others I'm not sure how I finished. While others have been such a joy. I am richer for having entered their worlds. So... reading.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (non-fiction, audiobook)

Right book, right time. One test of a book is how often you bring it up in conversation and I've been able to refer to, and evangelise about, Braiding Sweetgrass often in the weeks since reading it.

It ranges widely - and does drift in parts, being rather long - but the topic is so broad (see that subtitle) and the process of decolonising the thinking of a reader such as me when it comes to plants takes time.

Embodies the gift economy. Kia ora, RWK!

No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (novel, audiobook)

Gonna call it now: this is the funniest book I will read all year. 

Is it a novel? Is it another autobiography, veiled this time by the third person pronouns? Is it longform poetry?

Answer: it is the natural end result when language and attention and logic come out the other side of being "extremely online".

Buy a ticket, buckle up and enjoy the ride.

Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals by Patricia Lockwood (poetry, ebook)

Okay, so this actually is poetry :)

Notes from an Apocalypse by Mark O'Connell (non-fiction, audiobook)

This is the book I thought I was going to read when I picked up End Times by Bryan Walsh in May. I wasn't sure if I was ready for more apocalypsia so soon, but O'Connell's book lived up to my (deferred) expectations. Maybe it's homerism, but I enjoyed the section set in NZ the most. Often, that would be the part where the hollowness of the European correspondent rang through, but not here. 

Kia ora MO'C!

The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary (novel, audiobook)

Okay, so, hear me out. I enjoy reading romance, at least this kind (blame Emma Lord). It would be stretching things to call this a rom-com as it's not super funny. It's tone is breezy, but then the main female character is recovering from a toxic relationship (and gets stalked by the gaslighting ex) and the male lead's brother is in prison for a crime he didn't commit. 

The set-up (a male hospice nurse who works nights rents out his flat 7pm to 7am to a junior book editor so he can pay legal fees for his brother, and the two flatmates only converse through post-it notes...) is super hooky. 

Sometimes the beats felt like they came with signposts: THIS IS A BEAT.

But I devoured it. I like romance. It only took me 38 years. 

Their Lost Daughters by Joy Ellis (novel, audiobook)

Speaking of genres, one I've not had as many hangups about is crime. No doubt because it's coded as more masculine. But this one was only meh.

My Year Abroad by Change-Rae Lee (novel, audiobook)

Speaking of genres, this was NORTH AMERICAN LITERARY FICTION. How can you tell? It's at least twice as long as it needs to be. Fixates on a particular bucket of imagery (food & gustation). Is told over two time periods (with one being more interesting that the other). It became a game of diagnosing its cliches and flaws - and that got me through to the ridiculous climax.

This review from the NYT does a pretty good job of capturing how I felt: "this long and draggy book is a 'controlled fllight into terrain'."

Real Life by Brandon Taylor (novel, audiobook)

Speaking of NORTH AMERICAN LIT FIC. This was so: I spent time at the Iowa Writers Workshop. Yawn.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo (v. short novel, audiobook)

Nope. I am still to find the fantasy that converts me to the genre.

The Garden Jungle by Dave Goulson (non-fiction, audiobook)

The bumblbee guy tries to branch out, but doesn't bring anything new to the conversation.

FILM & TV

Line of Duty - Seasons 4-6

Mare of Easttown - finished season 1

We are the Champions - Season 1

The Masked Singer NZ - Season 1 - the kids really got into it, for some reason

Feel Good - Seasons 1 & 2

Sweet Tooth - Season 1

Long Time Running

Breaking Boundaries: the science of our planet

Framing John DeLorean

This Town

Love Birds

This Fluid Thrill Book Awards: the best things I read in 2020

You can find similar lists for 2019, 2018, 2017, (...), 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, & 2010.

The rules are, as ever, that I'm choosing the books I liked best from what I read in the calendar year, not solely from those released in that year. 

Though my reading does tend to skew towards more recent releases...

For 2019 I set myself reading targets, focussed on increasing the diversity of my reading, and tracked my progress. At the end of the year I set myself the target of reading 70 books in 2020 (which I promptly forgot about, but came pretty close with 66), and left it at that. I wanted to see how diverse my reading would be with a more laissez faire approach.

And the results were... interesting.

Only 6/66 books were in translation, with 3 of those being from French (Flaubert, Camus, Houllebecq).

Only 27/66 books (41%) were by male authors, which is probably my best ever result in terms of reading female and gender diverse writers (last year male authors = 52% of reading).

I didn't do so well in reading non-white writers, with only 12/66 (18%), which is pretty damn poor (2019 = 25%).

And books by nationality tells a similar story:

As per usual, fiction dominated other forms, and audiobooks far outstripped physical books, but I've started reading poetry collections as e-books from my local library and it's really great, hence this surge of poetry & e-books relative to previous years.

Okay, enough quantification, time for some... ur... qualification.

My top ten reads of 2020

1. Winter by Ali Smith / Spring by Ali Smith / Summer by Ali Smith

I'm cheating already! 

I wish I'd had time to re-read Autumn (it was in my top 10 in 2017) before the year was up and have something intelligent to say about the quartet as a whole, but here's what I said in November:

Holy shit, Ali Smith. I am in awe of you. 

...

My favourite out of all four was Spring. Somehow blends The Sixth Sense and No Friend But the Mountains, and spends a lot of time on Katherine Mansfield and Rilke. It works.

2. Weather by Jenny Offill

What I said about it in June: 

Loved it. Leaves all the guff of novels on the cutting room floor (explaining who folks are and how they fit together) and just gives us the fluff of daily life.

3. How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

What I said about it in August:

This is a book I'm already finding multiple reasons to recommend to people. It's not about withdrawal from society at all, but a refusal to play on the field as it's defined by the online materialists.

There's a lot of depth to Odell's arguments, and I enjoyed the fact so much of it is grounded in the (visual) art world. And nature. And history. 

So good.

4. Convenience Store Woman by Sakata Murata

Somehow I didn't include this in any of my consumption diaries, so I can't say for certain which month I read this (or quote from a more contemporaneous reaction), but I definitely read it and LOVED it.

A great mixture of weird and banal, sinister and sweet. Looking forward to reading her next book, Earthlings, in the coming months!

5. Lost Connections by Johann Hari

What I said about it in July: 

I have had this on my Audible wishlist since it came out in 2018 but, despite depression marching ever closer over that time, I kept putting it off...

I only finished Lost Connections today so I haven't fully processed everything. There weren't many surprises. Materialism is bad. Big pharma is bad. Contact with nature and other humans is good. But Hari stitches it all together so clearly, weaving in his own experiences with depression and anti-depressants. One refrain through the book is why some people can see the off-ramp but never take it - like Joe, the paint-mixer whose mindless job is sucking his will to live and dreams of becoming a fishing guide in Florida but never does anything about it. 

It's what I'm asking myself now. I'm working too much at the expense of everything else because, why? Because I have a mortgage and just a few more years of killing myself to live will be worth it? By which time my kids will have been boiled slowly in this stressed atmosphere, used to being fed and ferried by us but little else. 

Something has to change... 

After writing this, I started applying for different jobs in Wellington, then got very excited about a job in Dunedin and now we're moving back down there at the end of this month!

Right now it feels like there's so much to do and so much to still fall into place (like, uh, somewhere to live), but the big driver is still to have a better lifestyle as a family.

6. Lanny by Max Porter

What I said about it in March:

Porter has a subversive streak, evident both in how he puts a page together and use of narrative... For the longest time, the 'disappeared boy' arc felt fresh and new. That it doesn't hold that line to the very end is a bit disappointing, but it's still fantastic overall.

(The passing of time meant the positives remain vivid while the slight disappointment had been forgotten.)

7. Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout

What I said about it in June:

Very good. Does aging so well. The stories without Olive do a pretty good job of holding their own.

8. Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

What I said about it in July:

O'Farrell rises to the challenge of writing about Shakespeare's life without making it Shakespearean in scope or language but still making art. I really loved this. Agnes takes a while to emerge as the heart of the story, and overtake the eponymous child, but it's masterfully done. Stephanie Merritt's review in The Guardian covers the main strengths. Just so good. Top ten book of the year with a rocket.

9. Dark Emu, Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident by Bruce Pascoe 

What I said about it in August:

I felt pleasantly flayed by this one. Like, it should be no surprise that Australia's colonial history actively overwrote a lot of what the indigenous people had going on pre-contact. So much cognitive bias going on then and now. 

And....

Because I'm not done cheating, I'll let two different novels, both "genre" fiction, share the final slot...

10= The Martian by Andy Weir

What I said about it in July:

... I got sucked in quick and finished it in a couple of days.

I'm a sucker for hard sci-fi. This doesn't have the scope of something like Neal Stephenson's Seveneves. We're only a couple of decades in the future and every piece of technology described conceivably exists now. But Weir makes it thrilling and epic, while also keeping a sense of the quotidian, both on the surface of Mars and back in Houston.

Two thumbs up!

10= The Infinite Noise by Lauren Shippen

What I said about it in November:

I really liked this. A YA novel, which is basically an adult novel with permission to have a plot and be a bit emo, that asks what if the X-Men were real, but instead of becoming superheroes they went to therapy?

August consumption diary

MUSIC

BOOKS

I read seven books this month. Scratch that: I listened to seven audiobooks. 

I listened to/read five books total across June and July. And six across April and May. 

Some of this burst of activity is down to really enjoying most of them, and them being quite varied. (Perhaps the Rankin ranked lowest because it came too close on the heels of another crime novel (Scrublands)?)

I got some new over-ear, sound-cancelling bluetooth headphones, too, which meant I could mow lawns etc without losing any comprehension. (I can recommend the Anker A20's for anyone looking for a great pair around the $100 mark.)

I think I pottered more in the garden, too, thanks to a very mild August. 

Good books, good weather, better moods. They all feed into each other.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell (non-fiction, audiobook)

This is a book I'm already finding multiple reasons to recommend to people. It's not about withdrawal from society at all, but a refusal to play on the field as it's defined by the online materialists.

There's a lot of depth to Odell's arguments, and I enjoyed the fact so much of it is grounded in the (visual) art world. And nature. And history. 

So good.

Dark Emu, Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident by Bruce Pascoe (non-fiction, audiobook)

Speaking of history, I felt pleasantly flayed by this one. Like, it should be no surprise that Australia's colonial history actively overwrote a lot of what the indigenous people had going on pre-contact. So much cognitive bias going on then and now. 

I did a bit of Googling about the book and Pascoe and quickly fell down an Andrew Bolt-size hole. When people try and attack genealogy or blood quantum (and those people who have websites with banners at the top that read, "No living person, black or white, is responsible for what other black and white people did generations ago") it's clear they're resorting to a cynical playbook. Much like Odell suggests, the best thing to do is set off that particular field of play and interact with real people.

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor (novel, audiobook)

I'm a sucker for stories that bury a character's superpower and once it's revealed, stick to the original genre.

In this case, Paul is a shapeshifter. He can make his boy bits into girl bits. His sexual orientation is a fluid as his gender and he spend quite a bit of time being in a lesbian relationship. There's elements of myth and fairy tale woven in. As well as being a kind of bildungsroman. Nothing much feels resolved by the end, except we're nowhere like where we were when we started.

Incredible.

In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan (novel, audiobook)

Okay, so maybe the fact my kids like Harry Styles bought me here. And now I have that song stuck in my head again.

But Brautigan was doing something really interesting in the Sixties. I can see a thread that runs through into George Saunders. The flatness of tone. The way language is rotated 90 degrees.

I think I'll have to read Trout Fishing in America, now.

Don't Hold My Head Down: In Search of Some Brilliant Fucking by Lucy-Anne Holmes (non-fiction, audiobook)

What to expect from a sex book by the author of three Rom Com novels and founded the No More Page 3 campaign? A blend of tell-all memoir, Bridget Jones-y gags and Fourth Wave Feminism? Why, that's right. Holmes manages to hold these elements together and delivers an entertaining and enlightening book.

Scrublands by Chris Hammer (novel, audiobook)

The reporter as detective isn't exactly new. Nor is setting a crime novel in the parched Australian hinterland. But Hammer (and ex-journo himself) does a bloody good fist of things in his first novel.

Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin (novel, audiobook)

As I said, I didn't feel the 20th Rebus novel as much as some of the other books I read this month. I hadn't read any from this series since I lived in Scotland 12 years ago, so I thought that was enough time. Maybe I'm just not a series guy? Or maybe semi-retired Rebus and nearly-clocked-out Fox and the ever dependable DS Clarke just weren't a compelling enough team to get behind?

MOVIES & TV

Ultimate Beastmaster - Season 3 (Aus version) - turns out this is perfect family viewing with a 7 year old gymnast and a 5 year old who loves pratfalls. Now to watch the earlier seasons and tolerate the American commentators.

The Big Lebowski - I thought I was re-watching this but I must have only ever seen it in parts. And some parts that felt familiar were actually because Fargo the TV show cut and paste them.

Three Identical Strangers

A Star is Born

Manhattan Murder Mystery

Quiz - 3 part miniseries

Love on the Spectrum - Season 1

Connected - Season 1

John Was Trying to Contact Aliens

Trolls: World Tour